Ryan Air when do they lower prices

Mr_Wang

jpsartre wrote: »

Exactly. It would be akin to having a high street shop with lots of people browsing but nobody buying and the owner thinks the best way to rectify this is by increasing prices. As I said, it makes no sense. Aside from that, airlines have a much more accurate measure of interest in the number of seats actually sold so the theory is poorly motivated as well.

Christopher Elliott of the Washington Post says "Don't think of a travel site as a supermarket. Instead, picture it as a Middle Eastern bazaar. How much for the ticket? Whatever it looks as though you're willing to pay"

This followed a report on whether or not airlines plant cookies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041505434.html?sid=ST2010041602933

Then there is the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2010/aug/07/computer-cookies-booking-online

BudgetTravel: http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/fares-watch-out-for-slippery-airline-websites,9793/

Tonnes of chat about it on Airliners: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5099167/

The worlds biggest Airline forum (Flyertalk); http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-1356268.html

...And loads and loads of others that all back up the theory including personal experiences across all the links Ive placed.

The only people denying it are the airlines themselves (obviously) and a minority of people.

antenna

Wang-tastic information.

jpsartre

Sigh, people talking about a conspiracy theory is not evidence of said conspiracy. Aside from the fact that the theory makes no sense and is poorly motivated, it would also be easy to verify if true, simply do a couple of searches and watch as prices rise. So I tried that. I've just done searches for the random flights below, all non-stop return flights from 10/7-17/7 for one person in economy. If more than one flight option was available I picked the earliest flight out and back. I did 3 searches for each, making sure to click the flights each time and proceed to the next page. Then I erased cookies and searched. And in a shock of all shockers, prices remained the same after each search and after clearing cookies (price is noted after each flight).

Easyjet: EDI-CDG (£146.23)
BA: LHR-CDG (£163.40)
BA: LHR-JFK (£774.45)
KLM: AMS-VCE (€351.03)
Lufthansa: FRA-HKG (€994.11)
Lufthansa: FRA-CPH (€189.27)
SAS: CPH-MAN (£232.70)
Flybe: SOU-ORY (£98.66)

antenna

I notice that Ryanair did not feature in your research.....Or Perhaps It Did!

Mr_Wang

antenna wrote: »

I notice that Ryanair did not feature in your research.....Or Perhaps It Did!

I fly very regularly, for instance between July and September I have 23 flights including 4 long haul.
I see this price increase as almost common place amongst every airline I ever book.
Let those who disbelieve continue to pay over the odds, whilst the rest of us clear a bit of history and chug away on the cheap

dodger75

How do you "clear cookies" ??

I am clueless as to how to do this!

jpsartre

antenna wrote: »

I notice that Ryanair did not feature in your research.....Or Perhaps It Did!

They didn't. Does it matter or is your claim is that it's a Ryanair exclusive thing?

antenna

dodger75 wrote: »

How do you "clear cookies" ??

I am clueless as to how to do this!

Google is your friend

cubegame

The cookie thing is nonsense.

Why anyone thinks that an airline would have hundreds and thousands of pounds of IT equipment for yield management and have to rely on something as crude as cookies which any old fool can get round beggars belief.

antenna

I dont believe that cookies stored on your computor affect your flight price quote.
But i do believe that checking specific flight date/time searches alert the ticket provider to demand for that exact flight and will cause that exact flight price to increase temporarily.
The load factor/yield managment calculations will after a while return to normal and the price will revert (either up or down) to the normal parameters.